DIMITAR DILKOFF / AFP
A lit Christmas tree in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, December 19, 2022.
WAR IN UKRAINE – Break up with the Russian neighbor by any means necessary. This Sunday, December 25, some Orthodox Ukrainians celebrated Christmas together with Catholics, two weeks before the traditional celebrations.
Why was the celebration brought forward by two weeks? Everything is related to the war that Russia started in February. Ukraine, a country with a mostly Orthodox population, is split between a church dependent on the Moscow Patriarchate, which announced in late May it would sever ties with Russia because of the Russian offensive, and another independent of Russian oversight.
In October, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is not allied with Moscow, decided to celebrate Christmas on December 25 and not on January 7, the date of Orthodox Christmas, the American agency Associated Press explains. Which accentuate the competition between the two churches.
“We voted in our community and unanimously decided to celebrate Christmas on the 25th. It is society that makes certain demands and it is the Church that responds,” confirms Father Mykaelo, spokesman for the Orthodox Church of Kyiv, quoted by BFMTV.
“We must not remain under Russian influence”
“Changing the calendar should allow us to affirm our own civilization,” adds Vasyl Kolodiy, a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, in an interview with France 24. “This is a battle between a civilized world and a much less civilized world. »
According to a bishop interviewed by Politico, the change has been on people’s minds since 2017, when December 25 became a holiday. The war only accelerated the movement.
“The war brought us so much sorrow,” a loyal Olga Stanko told AFP at a downtown church. “We cannot remain under Russian influence,” she adds, as the military conflict has shifted to religious terrain in recent weeks.
Ukrainian shared
Olena Zakharova-Gorianska is also happy to celebrate Christmas for the first time on December 25th. “I don’t want anything to do with the occupiers, with the enemy,” says this woman, who survived the Russian occupation of the town of Gostomel, on the outskirts of Kyiv, in the first weeks of the conflict.
“On February 24, while I was still pregnant, the war began. I decided I didn’t want to follow any more traditions associated with Russia and the Russian-influenced church,” also told BFMTV Yulia, a mom who decided to celebrate Christmas this Sunday.
However, the postponement of the date of Christmas divides the population: In a November poll by Interfax-Ukraine, 44% of Ukrainians said they supported the idea of celebrating Christmas on December 25 instead of January 7.
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